Good God this thread is long. I started reading them, but there are too many, so forgive me if I restate something already said. Also some of these aren't really Mega Events, as they are pretty general and don't target the strongest civilization.

Galactic Expansion: Due to some unknown physical law, the fabric of space itself has rapidly expanded, pushing star systems and their planets apart. The speed of all ships is effectively halved.

Time warp: The most powerful civilization is trapped in a time warp, and they lose 10 weeks of time. Every other civilization still uses their 10 turns (if an AI civ is trapped, they would simply be motionless and get no income or manufacturing/research progress for ten weeks; if you are the most powerful civilization, you would click turn, but you would see the other civs take ten turns worth of progress, and the date would move ahead by ten weeks instead of one.)

Supernova: One star explodes, destroying it and all it's star systems.

Dreadlords: [some backstory. It was the beginning of the game, and in like 50 turns, I get a message saying the Dreadlords were going to take over the galaxy. I almost shat my pants. I was scrambling to rush build a military. Then I saw that they had one planet, and all they were doing was terraforming a red space. I just landed one troopship, and they died. PATHETIC!]
Anyways, instead of getting some crap planet, they should arrive with a small fleet and a few troop ships (say 3 of each) instead. They immediately take some planets and kick some ass. Much better.

Rebellion: Someone posted this idea earlier; I second. Some planets (say about 2-3 whole star systems that are relatively close) form a new civilization.

Minor Race Expansion: Again, someone already said this. Make a minor civ a major civ.

Paradise: The weakest civilization finds a Precursor world that was locked away in another dimension until recently. This world has a huge PQ (say 25), and is fully developed with an even spread of buildings (labs, factories, farms, banks, embassies, entertainment centers), all of the highest technological levels.

Military Coup: The general disapproves of your aggressive, preemptive invading of other civilizations and takes matters into his own hands. About one third of the ships of the strongest civilization are given to the weakest civilization.

Plague: A mysterious plague wipes out half the population on all worlds of the strongest civilization before it is cured.

Dreadlord Supership: The weakest civilization finds an ancient weapon that the Dreadlords were constructing before they vanished. This supership would have a special hull size above huge, and it would be virtually indestructible, with 100 or so attack and defense in all categories, it has the maximum sensor range, and its support range spans the whole galaxy, regardless of the civ's planets. The only downside is that it has little room for engines, meaning it can only move 5 spaces/week.

Wormhole: A stable wormhole appears (with two ends), allowing all civs to send ships back and forth through it (or on civ can claim it for themselves and defend the wormhole).

Robin Hood: The strongest civilization has its entire treasury stolen by an unknown organization, claiming to be "fighting for justice against the oppressor", which is divided amongst the other civs.

Economy leech: A new minor civilization colonizes a planet, but they are using funds leeched from the income of the strongest civilization to do this. The strongest civilization's income is halved until they find and eradicate this minor civ.

Corruption: The congressmen of your party are found to be involved in a scandal. Your party immediately loses control, and you have a massive approval penalty which gradually declines over the period of one year, meaning you have to raise approval if you want to be re-elected sooner rather than later.

Aesthetic Movement: There has been a popular trend amongst our citizens. People have expressed great desire for art, music, literature, and general cultural enrichment. The populations of each world has demanded that their planetary governors contribute a large portion of taxes towards concerts, museums, and carnivals. The maintenance cost of each colony has gone up by 10 bc.

"Revenge of the Hippies": The people have become increasingly wary of the development of our worlds, and they have begun to place more value on conservation of the environment. They have demanded that you set aside tracts of land for national parks and reserves. The PQ of each planet has effectively been reduced by 1 (or, if you didnt want this to be a permanent affect, you could have a special development called "natural reserve" or something that would auto build on each world, and you couldn't demolish it or discontinue construction of it, it would just take up space pretty much, then when this event ended after a year or so they would all self-demolish, freeing up the space again).

On the Space Monster schtik, how about one like the Amoeba Wars board game ('80's one by Avalon Hill)?

I just don't see why mega events have to only hurt the strongest civ. The effects should be ramndom and effect virtually everyone and not target the strongest.

'cause people are tired of bein' hassled by the man!...maaan.

Events could be tweaked to affect races with certain super-abilities.

-A random civilization is able to use Dread lord tech and all other civilizations declare war (if good) or slowly begin to steal Dread lord tech from them (if evil) or leave galaxy (if neautral).

Jihad. One of your most populous planet became more militaristic and the population are being incite to perform Jihad. Planetary approval due to population drop dramatically, soldering skill are increased especially for troop transport originating from this particular planet against one of your allies, because they are the great Satan according to the Jihadists.

Inter-racial relations improves. Your race relationship with the neighbour improves, border planets sees significant growth due to inter-marriages.

Discovers a new trade goods. The dung/organs of a particular animal in you civ turns out to have medicinal purposes of the other civs. You can scoop these dungs and breed the animals but will cause planet quality to drop. Animal rights activist are not happy if its the organ.

Due to some inept economics deals you are now in debt to one of the civ or corporation for x turns. Unless you give them a tech / cash / planets.

Foreign fighters in one of your colony. While you are at war with a far off civ your neighbour civ populance has become sympathetic to your plight and are sending foreign fighters to bolster your defense ( + Soldering skills) but their influence has spiked as a result. Something similar to Bosnia & Checnya with the influx of Arab fighters during the war and the resulting increase of Islamization.

Thats all for now. Thank you Stardock for making an great game.

United Planets Event. Red district planet, similar to the prison planet event in DA. Only I really don't know how that would improve or undermines your civs. Maybe positive economy but negative influence since your the galactic pimp now.

Still taking suggestions?

Asteroid Fields around the galaxy are becoming depleted by massive mining. They are loosing asteroids at an alarming rate. Our main source of industrial manufacturing is becoming extinct.

A group of Pirates arrive, but instead of attacking you, they offer to serve you. These Pirate ships are incredibly strong, but they don't have planetary conquest or starbase technology- yet- and are willing to go to war to gain it. Or they could just trade for it and ally with you.

Holy war is declared. All good civilizations are locked into war with the evil. Neutral civilizations, caught up in the midstream of this agressive conflict, are subject to persecution by either side.

A supernova has occured, shattering the core of the ________ race. They have lost five planets in this supernova and their economy is reeling. They are on the brink of disaster.

Reasoning for them.

Event 1: If there's a custom map with lots of asteroids or one race is mining a lot or races are locked together in a standoff because of them, this forces those races to use other resources besides mining.

Event 2: If the galaxy is heading to a 'peaceful' victory, this will shake some things up. Even the weakest civilization would love to have a group of massive Pirate fleets on their side, no?

Event 3: An unbalancing event, basically.

Event 4: If one race is too dominant, they loose a chunk of their worlds/starbases/asteroids.

With the new updates and TA coming out, ARE there going to be new Mega Events? Will we know what they will be before hand?

nod to the above quote. also a notification as to what the UP vote will be on prior to the acctual vote, allowing for some influence dickering. (or, my civ will give you xbc if you vote this way etc.)

secondly, please remove the hard code link from events to xeno ethics. there is a huge amount of potential unrealized for normal events mod wise becasue of this linkage. or, create "post ethics" events, such as..
a) scientist has found a way to increase weapons by x %, however in doing so, the ships created on this planet will lose movement/defense/hp do to the massive energy requirements, do you wish to proceed?
b)planet x has found to have massive undergound caves, this will increase its PQ by x%, however people do not care to live underground (neg morale x%), do you wish to proceed?

limited choice not-so-mega events could also be created if xeno ethic hard code was eliminated. ie

1) planet x has experienced a massive crustal upheaval, Y % of all planet improvments have been destroyed.
various companies have offered discounts on rebuilding and possibly improving infrastructure in the bargin, what can you afford?
1a) company a offers to send a massive work force with all the latest technologies available, costing Z BC but increassing manufacturing on the planet by W % permanently
1b) company b offers the same, but using current tech's (less cost, less manufacture bonus)
1c) company C offers to rebuild, but desides it might be best to change the focus of the planet to better research the effects of planetary crustal shifting- hindsight being 20/20 and all that ( bc cost, research bonus instead of manufacturing)
1d) greenpeace offers the suggestion that the planet becomes a historical preserve. ( bc cost, planetary influence bonus)

2) planet x has discovered a heretofore unknown deposit of gold pressed latinum, increasing its economy by y%

3) planet x has over-whelmed its natrual resources, decreasing its econ/man/research by y%

Im sure that others could think of better examples then the above, but the gist is that the xeno ethic hard code removal or a change to pre/post xeno ethic event types could lead to a plethora of new options.

as for "mega" events...

A huge blast of radiation reduces range/speed/ of ships by 1/2 for x amount of turns as life support systems struggle to cope with it.

A giant stellar wave hits and destroys all ships in the area (galaxy wide or sectors)

Radiation wave that reduces pop growth.

a major breakthrough in (one defense/weapon tech) makes them x% More effective.

a shift in the fabric of space makes (one defense or weapon tech) x% Less effective.

A major political upheval has occured for all civs, approval is halved (for that week) and emergency elections are held, resulting mostlikely in loss of political party majority until next election.

I had one of those "idea" posts a while back like this. It pretty much said that you could see how your ALLIES would vote and you could use the trade screen to alter their choice. Figuring it would give you a reason to have allies when you arn't looking for a political victory.


Also, if you could be elected president of the UP you would get to choose what was to be voted on, out of a list of say 3 things. But the ones you dont choose will stay in that list for the next vote.

ohhh yeah, forgot to mention, if mega events are not going to be moddable in the near future, at least allow for some of the options that are mega-event specific to drop down to normal events please. (ie events that effect galaxy sectors, ship generation, etc)

I wouldnt mind being able to turn on/off each event individually, maybe under gameplay options. If that were the case then go crazy add anything you want. lol

Since I'm something of a science geek and also a masochist (Pirates AND Dread Lords AND Jagged Knife all at once? Bring it on!), here's my idea:

Von Neumann Beserker - A strange, unmanned drone has appeared at a point in the galaxy. It has decent (but not overwhelming) attack and defense, and is very fast. It will intelligently hunt down and attack the least defended targets (minifreighters, anything with a cargo hull, etc). Every ship destroyed by it instantly spawns an identical probe, which will fleet with the original up to a certain point (three probes, maybe), and then any created after that will break off and form new fleets. Once a certain number of probes are created, the fleets will start invading planets (they have VERY good Soldiering and effectively 500 soldiers/probe or so). Any planet taken by the probes will halt all production and, every week, lose 1 planet quality and spawn a probe, until the planet is reduced to quality 0 and rendered uninhabitable.

Unless quickly stopped, the probes will grow in numbers until they are simply unstoppable. So, you have a choice: Do you hunt them down and wipe them out before they cause any damage, or do you let them shake things up a bit and cause serious damage to a civilization or two before trying to stop them?

I have no idea if that would be hard or possible for stardock to do, but I personally LOVE the idea!

I like a couple of ideals already thrown around. Civil War in your faction though I would like to see it triggered by low happyness in your population. Attached to that might be a call for cruisade, which would be a population call for war, the benefit would be if you do you get a massive production bonus to build ships for the war effort and if you dont then moral is hurt in your population. I figure it could be a call to take a specific planet or a general war either way. Also a great person event that gives a huge bonus to a particular planet for example a great engineer would boast a planets manufactoring sector for a limited time kind of like the tax increase event.

I would also like to see a underworld develop. If your evil you can allow them to say and you get a piece of the action but people get killed in the gang wars that follow. Or you can be good and spend the money to get rid of them, I think that this should cause a increase in trade profit since the traders no longer have to pay protection money to the underworld, that and I feel that there should be a reward for choosing the good choice.

Ah, so you're a Drengin eh?!  

Not much to add here; my two votes are for: (a) a minor civ becoming a major civ, particularly because minor civs tend to get picked off by the AIs as the game progresses; (b) a true supernova which (contrary to what some other posters said) would have an impact on a large section of the map, with the radiation shockwave travelling outward in a circle at the speed of light, but declining in intensity (inverse square law). Impact would be to reduce population, lower PQ (but allow improvement after the fact), and possibly destroy facilities (particularly farms), though this impact would lessen with distance. ..bruce..

I like the comet idea. And the supernova looks cool, but pretty severe, I think the supernova should just affect the star system surrounding it, turning the surrounding planets into uninhabitable ones.

a chance of turning them all into asteroid belts.

Amen to that. I quit a game recently because of that Mega event...

-On planet %, a member of the % civilization's military while working at a spore missile silo had accidently launched all of the spore missiles that are tareted at various planets, some are ours.One they hit it will make them powerful.

 

We shouldnt need to shy away from topics and ideas just because a few people want to be babies about it...

 

The last thing we should do is offer respect to the losers who are that sensitive to terrorism in a video game...

 

also the black hole idea is pretty lame... how to stars magically survive anyway? I think there is a massive misunderstanding of how a black hole works and because of that the average snot here comes up with a pretty lame scheme for thier use... leave them out as they are cliche enough as it is.

All the races get a sensational urge to ally with you, almost like that sexual feeling you get or love at first site.

I like the idea of all of the minor races uniting together and becoming a new major race AI.  It seems natural they would do this considering it would be in their mutual self interest to unite or fall one by one as they usually do in every game.